


In Sleep We Dream of Horrors

by needchocolatenow



Category: DCU Animated, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-13
Updated: 2011-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-16 22:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/169931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/needchocolatenow/pseuds/needchocolatenow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Superboy likes sleeping in Robin's bed, even when he has nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Sleep We Dream of Horrors

**Author's Note:**

> yj_anon_meme: Superboy/Robin - Superboy has grown accustom to sneaking into Robin's room at night and crawling into bed with him. Dick doesn't mind it because it makes him feel warm and safe, and waits up for him each night. It's gotten to the point where they can't sleep without each other.
> 
> Bonus points if Batman arrives early to talk to Robin about something and sees them in bed together.

 

The first time it happens is a complete accident. They’re all bruised and exhausted. It’s been three days since they’ve slept and all the adrenaline has left them bone-weary to the core.

Kid Flash barely gets through the door to his room before he collapses on the floor, his toes peeking out into the hallway, already snoring away in dreamland. Artemis manages to drag herself into bed, her clothes lining the hallway in an erratic mess. Miss Martian gets in bed, but she’s sleeping on top of the sheets, her door wide open and forgotten. Aqualad’s door is also open, although he’s nowhere to be seen. There’s the sound of water running in the adjacent bathroom and his Water Bearers are scattered on the floor.

Superboy’s in bed, collapsed in a boneless sprawl. He takes up nearly the entire bed and underneath his arm, Robin cracks open one eye and nudges Superboy in the chest.

“Wrong room,” Robin says, his voice low and tired.

“Nnn,” says Superboy, but he makes no effort to move. He’s asleep again in seconds.

Robin just stares at the ceiling, watching it wobble and swim before his eyes and decides to close them. He’s too tired to drag Superboy to his own room and it’s so nice and warm and safe—

-

The second time Robin finds Superboy sleeping in his bed, he almost decides to see if Superman-clones can survive being suffocated to death by a pillow. Then, he thinks that maybe he can just commandeer Superboy’s room instead. Then, he thinks why does he have to go when this is his room and his bed?

He crawls into bed, over Superboy’s prone body, and settles in for a well-deserved sleep.

He wakes up when he feels Superboy moving, trying to gently dislodge his fisted fingers from the front of Superboy’s shirt.

“Oh,” Robin says and wills his fingers to unclench. He draws them back to himself, but Superboy catches his fingers and holds on. His hands are large, much larger than Robin’s own, and warm. Warm from sleep and rest from nightmares.

“Sorry,” Superboy says, their eyes not meeting, and Robin’s not sure what he’s apologizing for. Waking him up? Sleeping in his bed?

“No, it’s just—It’s—I’m—” Robin swallows and tries to regain his bearings. “Go back to sleep,” he says with a sigh. He’s holding onto Superboy’s hands as much as Superboy is holding onto his.

There’s a soft squeak of springs as Superboy repositions himself and just as Robin’s starting to slide back into unconsciousness, he feels himself being tucked under Superboy’s chin.

-

Whenever Haley’s Circus is bright and crimson in Robin’s dreams, he would hear himself screaming for his parents out on the trapeze. Blood paints the ground and the circus tent, but no one else sees it. No one but him. Bruce Wayne is there, somewhere in the cheering crowd, but he does nothing except drop his popcorn. There is no help and the blood continues to drip and pool and with every flip, he watches with suspended horror, just waiting for the line to snap.

It never snaps and Robin is left screaming because instead of his parents, he’s the one falling and the blood is choking him and there’s no safety net and no secure cable line.

“—in! Robin!”

Superboy is shaking him awake, blue eyes wide in the darkness.

“What?” he asks and he notices the way his voice is raw and cracked from screaming and he’s surprised that the whole team isn’t in there trying to wake him.

“You were screaming,” Superboy says. He looks pale and stricken and completely unsure. “You wouldn’t stop.”

“Oh,” Robin says and he has a strange sense of déjà-vu when he reaches out to dislodge Superboy’s hands from his shoulders. “I’m—I’m awake now.”

Superboy is sitting, one leg on the bed and the other trailing on the floor as he stares at Robin. The door is slightly ajar and the faintest light filters in, letting Robin know that everyone else is probably awake and have their doors wide open, even though the hall light is off.

“Sorry,” Superboy says so quietly that Robin thinks he might’ve imagined it. But Superboy isn’t meeting his eyes and Robin still doesn’t know what the apology is for.

Robin holds on to Superboy’s hand. He squeezes and draws Superboy into bed. When they’ve fitted themselves against each other, chest to chest and face to face, Robin whispers and tells him about Haley’s Circus. But only in the vaguest sense.

He leaves out the part about the falling—fallen—acrobats and their little robin.

-

“I heard about it. Your nightmares,” Batman says.

Robin instinctively sits straighter, as if he’s done something wrong. They’re in the Batmobile, breaking all sorts of traffic laws at one in the morning, and he wishes he never has to go to sleep. “Sorry,” he says. Because he is. Sorry. It’s been years since that day and he’s still hanging on to it. He can’t ever stop seeing the blood and the bodies and the crowd.

“No,” Batman says. There’s a gravity in his voice, a tiredness that Robin has never heard before. “I’ll never stop remembering.”

He’s talking about his own parents. His own nightmares, of when he had been a child and so helpless and so unable to do anything to save his parents.

Robin closes his eyes and tries not to think about the bodies. His parents. In a week, he’s going to go visit them and he wants to be able to keep the love his parents had for him separate from the chilling fear and horror of their deaths.

-

“Okay, what are you doing in my bed?” Robin asks when he steps out of the shower. There’s a cup of water in his hand and two small tablets in the other. He takes them both simultaneously and takes long gulps of water. He leaves the cup by his dresser.

Superboy’s already buried under the covers and has made room for Robin to slide in with him in the otherwise tiny bed. “You’ve been acting weird,” Superboy says. Then, he pauses. “Weirder than usual,” he amends.

Robin rolls his eyes and drops the towel from around his waist and gets into bed.

“Wh—” Superboy starts to say and he’s got a frown and a blush so deep that he makes a tomato look pale in comparison.

“Never slept in the nude before?” Robin asks with a smirk. “You are totally welcome to get out of my bed, you know.”

Superboy narrows his eyes, but doesn’t move from his spot, even when Robin presses closer. “I want to know,” he says and there’s something in his voice, deeper than just concern for a teammate. It’s trust, that Robin will tell him what’s wrong. Trust that he will not be shut out. It’s Superboy reaching out in the strange way that he only knows how.

Robin shuts off the light with snap of his fingers. He reaches out to the shape of Superboy in the dark and finds his hand.

“I’m going to see my parents,” Robin says.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Superboy asks, confusion evident in his voice.

There’s nothing inside Robin; he’s hollow and tired and he’s cried enough when he was nine that all his tears have been used up. So his voice is steady as ever when he answers; “They’re dead.”

-

“What is wrong with you?!” Kid Flash is yelling, angry at the unknown because it’s the only emotion he can muster up. “You’re not…you!”

“Right now, I don’t want to be me,” Robin snaps and Kid Flash shuts his jaw with an audible click.

“Fine!” Kid Flash throws his hands up into the air and zooms away, a blur of color against the dull browns of the cave.

Robin stomps down the hall to his room, only to see Superboy napping on his bed. Something in him snaps and he grabs Superboy by the sleeve of his shirt and hauls him out of bed. “Get out!” he screams. “Get out, get out, get out!”

He shuts the door on a confused and hurt looking Superboy.

That night when the nightmares come, nothing chases them away and Robin watches as his parents fall to their deaths in an infinite loop.

-

When Robin opens the door, Aqualad is there. He looks worried and tired, like he hasn’t gotten enough sleep. Robin wonders why he hasn’t gone back to Atlantis to get a decent night’s sleep because the screaming every night just seems to get worse and worse.

“Robin,” Aqualad says and his voice is so sad and filled with pity, it nearly breaks Robin to look him in the eye.

“Yes?”

“I think…you should go back to Gotham. Take some time to rest. You need it,” Aqualad says.

He draws in a sharp intake of breath. It can’t be that he’s being benched, is it? But he knows he is. His situation, his terrors; he’s unstable. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ll try to keep it down.”

Aqualad flinches and he’s looking vaguely green around the gills. “No, Robin—”

“Don’t take me off the team,” he pleads. “Just…four more days! Batman won’t let me do anything in Gotham. I can help, I swear. Kaldur, you have to—”

“Robin!” Aqualad yells, placing two strong hands on Robin’s shoulders. “Robin. This is a period of your life that you need to sort out. This isn’t a fight. It’s a puzzle. You need to figure it out.” He frowns and Robin is shaking, from nerves and exhaustion. “Robin, is something wrong? You’re shaking.”

“Nothing,” he replies and brushes Aqualad’s hands away from him. “I-I’m going to take a nap.”

Aqualad is watching, expression inscrutable, as he takes out his small bottle of pills. He pops two into his mouth and swallows them dry.  

“What are those?” Aqualad asks, trying hard not to look too suspicious about the medicine. Robin leaves the container on the dresser and crawls into bed.

“Sleeping pills,” he says, waving Aqualad away. Instead of going away, Aqualad steps into the messy room. He gives the container one last look and turns to Robin.

“Try to get some sleep,” he says, tucking the blankets in tighter around Robin, who squirms and feels the warmth spread from his cheeks to the tip of his ears.

-

His dreams are vivid and much more terrifying; they take on whole new forms and shapes. His parents and Bruce being beaten to death one by one by Two-Face. Him, helpless to stop it, no matter how he pleads and begs. Two-Face just smiles, and gouges out his mother’s blue eyes.

He’s screaming when he wakes, clawing at his own face and trying to tear out his eyes.

There are strong hands wrapped around his wrist, a firm weight on his chest that’s stopping him from thrashing about. He opens his eyes and sees Superboy.

“Oh,” he says and he definitely remembers saying that last time.

Superboy lets go as if he’s been burnt and Robin is scrambling to catch a hold of him. He manages to catch the edge of Superboy’s shirt. They stare at each other, both in varying degrees of surprise.

“Don’t go,” Robin says and he hates the way his voice cracks.

Superboy is looking suspicious and unsure, but finally, he gets into bed. Robin is instantly clinging to him, his hands tight and trembling on the fabric of Superboy’s shirt, and nothing can make him let go.

“Sorry,” Superboy says and Robin tries to smile. He can’t though, because the muscles around his jaws hurt. Instead, he whispers words into Superboy’s chest.

“I don’t mind.”

-

He’s in the kitchen, getting a drink of water when he distinctly gets the feeling that something’s wrong. There’s no one else in the Cave, they’re all out on a mission that’s been assigned to them this morning. It’s just a rush of wind against the back of his neck that has him lunging for the kitchen knife, but he’d rather be safe than sorry.

There’s no one there, nothing that is visible to the naked eye, and he almost relaxes.

There are shapes moving in the shadows and he tenses, ready to strike when two people step forward in a horrible, broken way. He feels his blood going cold and he throws the knife as hard as he can.

“Hey! What was that for?”

They’re still coming, now looking angry and the flesh is dripping off their bones. There are others behind them; Bruce and Alfred and everyone that’s shown up in his nightmares.

His father is whistling, but it’s a horrible windy sound that doesn’t really pass from his rotting lips. His mother is talking, but her words and poison and malice. The eyes that Two-Face gouged out are gone, replaced with empty, bleeding sockets.

“No!” he yells when hands wrap around his arm. He kicks and screams, but they won’t let go.

“Robin, stop it!”

Stop? Stop what? Seeing everyone he loves die again and again? This is a dream, he has to wake up. He grabs the cup he was using and shatters it on the countertop. He doesn’t manage to shove it through his own throat when someone knocks him unconscious.

-

“What’s happening?” he asks the moment he can form words. Batman looms into view.

“Scarecrow’s hallucinogens,” Batman says. He’s frowning and Robin just moans softly and goes straight back to unconsciousness.

-

“You knew about them?! Why didn’t you take them away before he got like this?”

Kid Flash. Wally. Best friend.

“I didn’t know!”

Superboy. Strength. Anchor.

“None of us knew. We just thought they were sleeping pills.”

Aqualad. Leader. Comrade.

“How did he even get those pills? They’re Scarecrows manufacture, right? He’d know to stay away from them!”

Artemis. Rival. Ally.

“I don’t think he knew either.”

Miss Martian. Compassion. Friend.

He reaches out, blindly, and finds large warm hands that he remembers holding through the fog of nightmares.

“Robin!”

-

He’s watching his parents on the trapeze, but there’s no spotlight or crowd. They’re tumbling through the air and laughing and he’s frozen in place, unsure of what to do. They turn to look at him, bright eyes twinkling and mouths lifted into hearty grins.

“Dick, come on!” His father gestures from where he’s sitting one of the swings.

“Don’t be afraid,” his mother says, landing on the platform next to him. He’s no longer thirteen and Robin, he’s just Dick and he’s eight years old and with his parents in the circus. “Come, my little robin.” Her smile is beautiful as she leads him through the air.

When he gets to the other platform, his parents aren’t there. The circus melts away and he’s in the Batcave.

“Welcome back,” Batman says, his cowl off, but still wearing the Batsuit. His expression is genuine when he smiles.

“I’m home,” Robin says.

-

Detox is hell and Robin is left grouchy and disoriented, but finally he’s allowed to go to his room to sleep.

Expectedly, he finds Superboy in his bed and Robin just rolls his eyes and pokes at Superboy to get him to move over.

“You didn’t sneak out again, did you?” Superboy asks when Robin crawls under the blankets.

“And get lectured by everyone that lives between here and the moon again? No way,” Robin says. He yawns and settles in comfortably against Superboy. “Besides, I sleep better with you around.”

He can feel Superboy’s smile against the top of his head rather than see it.

“Good night, Robin.”

“Mmm.”

-

Robin startles awake when he feels Superboy get up. It’s still early and he’s still tired and he had been using Superboy’s chest as a pillow. He makes a noise and drags Superboy back down, but the other boy resists, something he’s never done before.

He cracks open one eye to see Superboy with a slightly fearful expression on his face.

“Robin.”

He turns over in bed so fast he suffers whiplash. Batman’s standing at the door and Robin’s not sure what to say to him.

“Uh—”

“Get dressed. We’re leaving in ten.”

The parting look that Batman gives Superboy is pure venom.

 

After:

“Did you see them?” Superboy asks.

“Yeah,” he replies and looks up at Superboy, who’s entirely too engrossed in by a book in his lap. Upside down. “I know you’re not actually reading,” Robin says and plucks the book from Superboy’s lap. Ugh, War and Peace. He slides it under the bed with a quick flick of his wrist. Russian literature is not his thing. “Were you bullied by Batman? You guys spent an awfully long time talking.”

“No,” Superboy says slowly, not meeting Robin’s eyes. “I have super strength. He can’t bully me.” There’s a story there, he knows it, and he’ll get it out of Superboy later.

Robin grins and climbs into Superboy’s vacated lap, planting himself there to the utter surprise of the other boy. “Of course,” he says and picks at a rip in Superboy’s shirt. It’s frayed and if he pulls at a thread, the whole thing might come apart. “Do you need new shirts?”

“What?” Superboy asks, blinking several times as if waking up from a trance.

“I’m going to dance in front of you naked,” he replies wryly.

Superboy turns an interesting shade of red and looks anywhere but Robin. “R-Really?” he asks.

Robin raises an eyebrow. “No,” he says. Superboy deflates a bit. “Only if you want me to,” he adds and Superboy’s blush deepens even further.

“Um,” Superboy says and clears his throat. He’s still not looking at Robin, his hands clenched into nervous fists at his side. He’s entirely too warm and if he put anymore pressure onto the mattress, he’ll break it.

“Sorry,” Robin whispers and presses a kiss at the edge of Superboy’s lips. He feels Superboy tense and freeze and takes the chance to press a full kiss onto Superboy’s mouth.

It’s quick, just a brush of lips against lips. Superboy’s lips are dry and a bit rough against his own, but it’s perfect. It’s everything that Robin had imagined it’d be and reminded himself to pull away.

“Why did you do that?”

Robin smirks and answers: “Batman didn’t kill you and hide the body. I’m assuming that he’s okay with this.”


End file.
